


whoever invented this language didn’t anticipate you

by recycledstars



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/pseuds/recycledstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He has names for all these things she feels: grief, anger, hurt, love, guilt. As though giving them names will change the fact of them.</i> Sort of a post-ep for <i>Suns and Lovers</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whoever invented this language didn’t anticipate you

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem on tumblr by [Joshua Espinoza](http://blankslate.tumblr.com/post/41199116770/i-tried-to-write-about-your-eyes-but-i-ran-out-of).

Peacekeepers don't dream, exactly, but she can still be haunted. 

Sleep doesn't come as easily as it once did.

Her life now makes that impossible, it lacks the simplicity that made it so easy to rest before. Now sleep is respite, a break, but not a clean one. She chases it, and that is when she has these thoughts, this half-waking. 

But still, she doesn't dream, another of Crichton's words, one he had to explain. Her neural circuits are not capable of it, at least not in sleep. She experiences something like it in this soup in between though. Images, ideas – memories and hopes (her life was simple before she learned to hope) – they come unbidden and refuse to leave her; a jumble where she cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. 

Her thoughts start at him.

 

Crichton, as Scorpius – maybe not wholly and she'll never know because she'll never ask – professing love. Not the first time, but the first time with words. It is an easy moment to relive; she has never been more afraid and she has never been happier.

Crichton, after Scorpius, his thumb on her lips and her telling him no against the will of her body, against the force of what she feels.

Crichton behind her in the dark, just barely not touching her and the pain and pleasure of the suggestion and she has such strong memories of her tongue in his mouth.

 

That want, at least, is familiar. But she thinks of other things –

The shock of freezing water, the nothing, and then, Zhaan, in her head, _Crichton loves you_. As though that should be enough, as though _love_ – a word, a _feeling_ – can justify someone else dying to correct her mistake. 

Zhaan, sprouting ( _dying_ ) and Aeryn can hardly stand to look at her. Her own death was quick, this is suffering. She should have fought Zhaan harder, should have been able to resist the gift. 

But the worst is Stark, Stark and his half-sentences; it doesn’t matter what he’s saying, she rarely listened before and can’t bring herself to listen now, all she hears is desperation. The worst part is she knows that feeling, has felt it herself. It’s _need_. (She needed to save John, it didn’t matter if she died, _that_ she died.) But Zhaan herself has said that Stark won’t be able to save her, and that feeling Aeryn doesn’t know, can only imagine. Even the thought, it makes her sick. 

And it makes her angry. With herself, with him, with Zhaan, with Crichton. This wasn’t what was meant to happen. Zhaan _loves_ her, Crichton _loves_ her, she _loves_ Crichton, Stark _loves_ Zhaan. And all it does is frell everything up.

 

¬He has names for all these things she feels: grief, anger, hurt, love, guilt. As though giving them names will change the fact of them. 

He has another word, which he uses to describe innate fallibility, the inability to understand the universe, why things happen the way they do. _Humanity_. She knows it because he used it once to describe something she had said, which she dismissed at first as ludicrous, because she knows what species she is, thank you very much, but once he explained the concept, well. Now she thinks this word of his is apt.

(Not precise, but then again, when his language was invented he had no idea other intelligent life existed.)

She wonders at how she feels, her hand on her chest, pressing down against bone, trying to relieve the pain her mind imagines is centred there. How is it possible to have all of this inside of her? 

Thinking back to when they met, she realises now that she underestimated his species. What he calls humanity isn't easy. 

And giving it a name doesn’t change that.

There are so many things she cannot change. Her mind is circling and so it returns to him; that maybe is something that she can.

 

 

In some ways it's gravity, two-star system, they orbit each other and maybe sooner or later collide. She suddenly has something to say to him that is heavy on the edge of her tongue so she goes to him (it might be where she always wanted to be anyway), says it.

"It wouldn't be charity." She kneels on the edge of his mattress. 

"Aeryn." 

He looks confused but she knows she hasn't woken him. She shifts her weight. "At least not from me to you." She pauses. "Maybe on your part."

"My part?" 

Still confused, but he makes room for her.

She mirrors him, settles onto her side, rests her head on her hand, elbow curled beneath her. "It's not what you want, exactly. I know that. And I know it would be wrong to ask you."

"But you're here anyway."

They've been leaning towards each other, and it was unconscious on her part until now. She nods. "Yes."

"Something wrong with your two hands?" he asks and she shifts, kneels in front of him to answer.

"Yes." She uses them to take both of his and slip them under her shirt. "They're not yours."

Her breath catches, at the contact, but also out of uncertainty. She cannot predict how he responds to her anymore. Before it was easy. He wanted her and she could give him what he wanted when she chose to ignore her fear. (He didn't know it was fear, then. She already loved him but he didn't know it, which left her to learn her own heart and struggle with it in peace.) Now he has complicated feelings of his own, and she doesn't know how to navigate them, doesn't know how to give him what he wants and doesn't know how to react when he won't take what she gives him in its place.

Aeryn watches him; he closes his eyes. She wants an answer, he gives her none. His hands do talk though they say nothing she doesn't already know. His thumbs trace and his hands palm and her body demands air, demands _more_ , but his face doesn't change. She bends down closer, until their noses touch. 

"Say something," she prompts, to the corner of his mouth.

He obliges with a question which might be flirtatious or half-serious. "What do you want?"

“You know what I’m asking for.”

Her mouth smiles because their lips almost touch.

“And you know it can’t just be this.”

She closes her eyes and what she feels is on her face, pain. She nods once. “Yes.”

“So same impasse, Aeryn.”

“I don’t want to talk, about what happened, about how we feel. The words don’t _matter_ John.”

“You _died_ –”

“I know.” She cuts him off. “I know what happened.”

“Then how can you forget?” 

“I _can't_. That’s why ¬¬–”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“My head.” She kisses him. “I’m tired, I just want to _sleep_ but I can’t stop –”

He interrupts her by kissing her like she wants him to, in the way that steals all her thoughts unless she concentrates extremely hard. She can do it of course, she can ignore the way her body says she _wants_ him: she’s had three cycles of practice and training in mental discipline. But that’s not the point. She wants to forget and he’s a very good distraction.

It shouldn’t be about this. She should let it be love, she knows that’s what he wants, but it can’t be because that would be too new, too difficult and she would be too vulnerable and that’s the last thing she needs, another reason to feel emotional, raw, exhausted. 

(And it is about that anyway, and _frell_ love because it gets into _everything_ and she never asked it to, never allowed it. It’s like sand and she’s always finding it in places she doesn’t expect.)

He’s a _very_ good distraction, so she loses herself in that. His hands are in her hair, finding over and over the shorter strands that make braiding it so difficult now. (She's angry at him for that.) She falls back against the pillows, breathes; he moves his hands back to under her shirt which has her eyes slipping closed and her mouth grinning like sin as she mumbles something that means pleasure.

Reaching blindly she finds his shoulder, the back of his neck, pulls him back to her mouth, busies her tongue.

They haven’t had a lot of practice but at _this_ (finally at _something_ ) he’s a quick study. And he doesn't linger, doesn't try to learn her better; that just confirms what she already knows, that something (this maybe) is wrong. He is usually more rapt in her reaction to him, less deliberate. 

(One of his hands is already in her pants, fingers finding where she is slick and searching from there. She could want it more but she wants it enough.)

Not that she needs less deliberate. He has already learned nearly all of the places she responds to most. And there has been tension between them, of all kinds.

In her that tension builds to overflow until she feels as though all of her is taut. He's avoiding looking at her, eyes focused on his hand pushing her into the mattress by her hip. And she avoids focusing on his expression, wishes it was darker, shuts her eyes again.

She spreads her legs, allows better access which he takes advantage of, does _something_ which means more pressure where she wants it. It moves through her in waves, all over, all at once. She can hardly stand the way it feels on her skin and her back arches to escape it which she can't. He kisses her neck, it makes it worse.

Her teeth find her lip. Somehow, it's important that she's quiet. 

(They are the only ones at risk of overhearing, but that might be worse, have greater consequence.)

She needs something to hold onto, something to do with her hands. He flinches when she grips his shoulder but she hardly notices; it’s lost in their other movements. (His weight is behind his hand and she’s rocking into it but she’s slipping against his sheets.) 

“You like this?” It’s warm in her ear and then he collapses into her and his mouth is in her neck. 

“Mmm.” She smiles. “Yes.”

More than like. She shakes (always does with this) and her teeth get sharper holding her mouth quiet. He says something she can’t hear into her neck, but she feels it, and she can tell he’s smiling too. It is a light moment and she feels light, but then she feels unbearably _greedy_ and her fingernails are rough against his scalp. She traps his hand with her thighs and comes, hard, then is suddenly still. 

He is too. 

All over her body her muscles cry out tiny shocks which say she is alive and her body has been _used_ as intended. (She’s proud of it, her body, thinks of it as a weapon, something she can _use_ and she likes to, in this particular way.)

Her palm presses against his stomach and she's smirking at him, intentions clear, but he stills her hand.

“Just you.”

“Don’t you want –”

“You?”

“No I know that you want _me_.” Her chest feels heavy and her pulse feels loud but less pleasantly than before; it cuts through the high. “That much is obvious. Don’t you want me to do something about it?”

“Not particularly.”

She’s still clothed, her shirt pushed up around her neck. She tugs it back down into place and wonders how she’s meant to respond to that. She's frowning as she says, “Okay.”

(The interlude in her head comes to an abrupt end.)

“It’s fine Aeryn. It doesn’t have to be ¬– you got what you wanted, right?”

“Yes.” She hides half her face in his pillow. “No. I’m not sure.”

His fingers skate her cheek, push her hair back behind her ear. “You don’t know what you want.”

She looks back at him. “No, I think that I do.”

“But.”

“I don’t know how. You always want to _talk_. You have names for all of these _things_ and I just don’t know how, to use the names, to even see the point in them.”

“Same as any label, keeps us on the same page.”

"You didn't need that before."

"Before was ... god, a lifetime ago Aeryn. An actual lifetime, for you."

"I'm not dead John."

"You _were_."

She shrugs. 

"So that's it? You live, you die, you live and that changes nothing for you?"

"You're angry with me."

"Only like you're angry with me." 

He gives her a significant look and she can't deny him that – she is angry with him though she cannot say why, exactly. (Scorpius, the neural cluster, freefalling to her death, this _feeling_.)

“We have no time,” he says. “It’s never going to be enough time. I could live to be 100 years old, do this every single day, and it wouldn’t be enough time with you.” He closes his eyes, noses into her hair. “And you just wanna waste it.”

She shifts so she can glare at him. “And you can’t just let it _be_. Always talking, always _words_.”

“You could –" He swallows. "Aeryn, forget this Scorpy clone in my head, forget whoever else decides to come after us – _you_ , you could destroy me. No battle, no aurora chair, no weapons necessary.” 

She understands that all too acutely.

He strokes her hair. “Do you understand what it was like without you? Not even a day Aeryn, it wasn’t even a _day_.”

“No, I don't understand and I don't ever want to.” 

There are tears in her voice if not in her eyes yet. She blinks before they can start and presses shaking lips to his. This is something she wonders at, kissing him, how it feels. Always different to how she remembers it being in her past. In her present, she is always trying to figure it out, what it is that makes it different. She kisses him again and again and again and still, no answer. 

There are rarely ever answers, she just gets used to the questions, adapts to ignorance.

She lets her mouth rest against his even when he stops kissing her. He pecks her lip. She doesn’t move. When she moves it ends, and she doesn't want it to end. Her fingers stroke into his hair and _this_ moment, the gentle moment, her cheek against his, this is the moment in which she is truly quiet, at rest.

It would be easy to stay. Somehow that has never truly been odd with him, though it always would have been before.

So many things, _before_ and _after_. She wonders if this is how she will always see it: her life split in two by this man, against her will and her wishes. He calls that _fate_. She has, secretly, come to be thankful for it.

But she intends for it to remain a secret so she twists away from him. "I should go."

He stops her with a soft tug on the back of her shirt. "Stay."

It is not, she supposes, a lot of him to ask. Not after everything. Aeryn lets him pull her back down against his chest. 

His fingers skim over her shoulder and in her chest the simple word ( _stay_ ) and simple gesture blossom. 

"I promise in the morning I'll pretend to be asleep until you can sneak out." It's meant to be humorous, she can tell by his tone. He says it against her hair: "Wouldn't want to interrupt your walk of shame."

She looks up, confused, and he shifts so he can read her expression. 

"I'm not ashamed to be with you. I am…" It takes her a moment to find the words. There’s a determined edge to the admission: "I suppose I am afraid. It's not the same."

"Aeryn." He half-smiles, like he's amused by her, and she takes offence until he speaks: "It's a turn of phrase. It means… never mind. It’s not important. The important thing is … you don't have to be afraid."

"Yes." She's serious when she looks at him though he is still smiling. "I do."

"Of my emotions, the ones you don’t need?"

"No." She looks down at her hands so she doesn't have to watch his face change; this will steal his brief joy, she doesn't like to be the cause of it. "Of mine."

He sighs, rolls onto his back to stare at the ceiling. "And what makes you think that not acting on it will make it any better when we have to fight? I know it's new to you but love isn't something you can switch on and off."

"Don't _patronise_ me. I know my own feelings." Anger is always quick in her, has been since she was a child. She has learned not to always express it in the way her instincts say she should, with violence or retreat or harsher words, but still, she feels it strongly and without warning. In this instance, she feels it justified. He _presumes_ so much. "I know you think Peacekeepers are heartless and mindless, incapable of thoughts we are not told to have, but we _do_ have the capacity to feel. If most of us don't it is only because we have had the impulse beaten out of us, literally if necessary, since childhood."

"I'm not finished." She's sitting, watching his reaction, and she silences him just as he begins to speak. She no longer needs to be harsh though, he looks contrite. She lowers her voice: "There are so many things that I don't understand about you. Half the things you say to me make no sense. But you knew as little about me when we met as I knew about you. You are very perceptive John, probably more than any of us. But you don’t know everything about me, and you certainly don’t know how I _feel_.”

“So tell me.” He shifts back onto his side, faces her, reaches out and skates her thigh with the back of his hand. “You know that I want to know Aeryn, it’s killing me over here.”

"I _know_ that I can't just forget." She stills his hand with hers but doesn't release it. Hers rests, trapping his against the sheets. "I have _tried_ but nothing stops it, nothing makes me love you less. Is it meant to be like that? Does it just … _grow_ inside you until you can’t take it anymore?"

“You make it sound horrible.”

“It _is_.” 

He pulls his hand free of hers. "It's not."

"Not entirely," she concedes. "But I am _used_ to it. I have adjusted to it. And I know that I will never be able to stop myself from trying to save you, that there will always be collateral damage, and I don't really care if I die trying or who dies with me, not when I think of the alternative. What scares me is, what happens when I can't save you?"

It breaks his resolve not to look at her. There are tears in her eyes now. She wonders when that happened, when she lost her ability not to cry. Her hands fold around her elbows and she hugs herself.

"What happens if I get used to _this_ , to being with you, and suddenly you're gone? I look at Stark, and, I will not let that happen to me John. I won’t. And you shouldn’t ask it of me.”

“I wouldn’t.” He sighs again. “But regret, wondering what might have happened, that’s much worse than grief. And I'm not trying to patronise you, but you couldn't possibly know that. Not until … people you love, they die, and after you think of all the things you could have said, could have done, and you wonder if you could have made things different, because if a butterfly flaps its wings–”

"You're making no sense."

"I know. But Aeryn, the path not taken, it will always keep you up at night, just like now."

"Why is your path better than mine?" 

His mouth twitches. "You mean other than the obvious reasons?"

"We can still – have sex, I told you that."

"But you don't really believe it."

"I'm here aren't I?"

"Not for that. Not really."

He holds out his hand. She takes it and he pulls her down against him. Her head rests on her palm, flat against his chest. 

He strokes her hair. "You want this, it’s not the same thing."

He's right, so she says nothing until after a pause: "We are mortal. And you will likely die before me."

"Hey, of the two of us, you're the only one who's died."

“That wasn’t meant to happen."

"What was?"

"I don't know. But I'm a soldier John. That was how I was supposed to die, in battle. Zhaan should not have to die in my place."

"Maybe this is how she feels she's supposed to die."

"Well she's wrong." She noses into his shirt; it still smells clean. “And how can I live with it if anyone else dies because of me, because I could not, cannot, be rational when it comes to you?”

“I know you feel guilty.”

“I didn’t ask Zhaan to bring me back, I told her not to, I should know that this is not my fault.”

“But you still feel like it is.”

“It's your fault.”

“My fault?”

“If you hadn't – if I hadn't – if I had never met you, I wouldn't even be here."

"And if I hadn't come through that wormhole, I wouldn't be here, wouldn't have met you, wouldn't have a Scorpy clone in my brain. We could keep going Aeryn, what ifs are infinite."

"You call it fate."

"Yeah. Or we could call it really bad luck, if you'd like."

She smiles. "Not all bad."

"Just lately." 

Curious, she shifts, studies him more closely. "What are you thinking?"

"It's – I _need_ you."

"We can't need each other."

"Well I need you. Without you ... I killed you. I don't know how I would have lived with it, hell I still don't know how I'll live with it ... so I need you, to ... like me, love me, because it's hard to like myself. Losing Zhaan? It's got nothing on losing you. And I hate myself because I'd make the trade." 

"I would too," she tells him, easily, but it doesn't ease him, doesn't soften the anguish she sees in his expression. She tries to smooth it over with her fingers. "I don't know how to be what you need. I don't know what to say to you now, what to do."

He smiles, but it's an effort. "Just stay." He hugs her closer. "Stay and tell me there's hope."

_Hope_.

Something she had said when he wasn't him, to the chip in his head. She's not sure she can do it again. "And that's enough?"

"One day at a time."

 

 

He falls asleep long before he does, maybe he dreams. She watches his face slack with sleep and swallows down all the other words, her reservations, her fear, and focuses on this one: _love_. 

She doesn't need it, the word.

It is small and inadequate and she feels so much more.


End file.
